Tatooine Sandstorm
by Ralph E. Silvering
Summary: Post-Revenge of the Sith. Obi-Wan gets lost in a Sandstorm on Tatooine and finds more than he expected. Obi-Wan Kenobi/Darth Vader.


Summary: Post-Revenge of the Sith. Obi-Wan gets lost in a Sandstorm on Tatooine and finds more than he expected.

Notes: Obi-Wan on Tatooine. For Obikin Week 2018. The Day-1 prompt was "storm". Story number two.

Tatooine Sandstorm

Obi-Wan was far from home, in the shadow of a huge sand dune and picking morning mushrooms, when the storm blew in.

One minute the sky had been clear blue – the color of Anakin's eyes – and the next, the sun grew dark, the wind howling around him as a wall of sand bore down on him from the horizon. The sandstorm arrived impossibly fast and before Obi-Wan could get his hood up, his face and hands were being bombarded by millions upon millions of coarse, painful grains of sand.

He closed his eyes tightly, head down, as he pulled his hood low and held his plain, brown Jedi robe close around him. There was a line of cliffs to the south, he remembered, as he tried to angle his feet in the correct direction and began stumbling forward slowly.

The winds were already at gale level and it was clear he could not remain in the scant protection offered by the dune. Several mushrooms were safe in the pouch beneath his robes, but most them were lost to the storm.

The winds screamed and howled, seemingly intent upon his destruction, while the very ground heaved under him; unstable, changeable, and liable to be sucked up into the air in mini-cyclones at a moment's notice.

Obi-Wan was soon hopelessly lost, his throat and nose burning from sand particles, his face scorched raw from the fury of the storm, and physically exhausted from trying to keep being blown off his feet.

How long he battled the storm, the Jedi Master couldn't say, but it felt like three-quarters of an hour passed before he conceded defeat. He was utterly unsure whether he was walking in the correct direction of the cliffs, or wandering off blindly into the Dune Sea, never to find his way out again.

For several long months since his arrival on Tatooine, after the destruction of everything he had held dear, Obi-Wan had kept his Force presence dampened. He hadn't even reached out to the Force during his daily meditation, for fear that the loss of so many Jedi would make his presence easy to sense by Darth Sidious and his associates.

It had felt like the loss of a physical limb, being cut off from the Force, and Obi-Wan wondered if Anakin had felt this way after Dooku took his arm.

But thoughts of Anakin always brought him to the edge of that dark pit of despair he constantly circled since the fall of both the Republic and the Jedi Order.

Thoughts of Anakin – of what happened to Anakin, of what he had _become_ – were what kept him up night after night, watching the stars alone, under the Tatooine sky.

Thoughts of Anakin weren't helpful, so Obi-Wan resolutely pushed them away and reached out to the Force. If he could just see which direction to go –

 _Pain. Fear. Loss. Death._

The overwhelming cacophony of emotions not his own exploded within him, screaming to him through the Force and across time.

Obi-Wan instantly fell to his knees, head spinning, and threw up, the furious winds of the sandstorm hurling the acidic contents of his stomach back over his chest and face. Nerve endings alighted with the raw agony he felt through the Force and he bit through his lip, tasting blood, in an effort to keep from keening in distress. There was so much pain.

 _Breathe, just breathe_ , he told himself even as his heart pounded loud enough to drown out the storm and he realized with horrifying clarity that something terrible had happened in this place.

Wave after wave of terrible loss and loneliness and grief poured over Obi-Wan and at first, he fought to keep hold of himself, the raise his shields and weather the Force storm, but then he began to get flashes, images from the past.

He saw Anakin – young, so very young – with tears on his face and a chilling emptiness in his eyes. He stalked inexorably towards the Jedi Master, his lightsaber cleaving mercilessly through fleeing Tuskens, old and young alike, the blue of his blade reflecting off his uncut padawan braid.

Obi-Wan saw a brown-haired woman, face careworn but kind as several Tuskens did unspeakable things to her.

 _Shmi_ …he thought.

He heard the screams of the dying, the battle cries of the warriors, felt the fear of the children, was buffeted by Anakin's overwhelming sense of loss and all-consuming grief.

'Anakin, no!'

Qui-Gon's voice, echoing from the Force.

Why had no one told him...Anakin, Padmé, Qui-Gon…?

How had he not known? Not sensed something within Ankain? Some lingering darkness. Had he been so consumed with his own problems that he had failed his padawan when Anakin had needed him the most?

For the first time in his life, Obi-Wan Kenobi stopped fighting.

He let the raw, dark-side energy in this place where his Padawan began to fall batter down his shields and roar through him. He let the violent sandstorm take him.

What was the point? He had failed everyone he had ever loved.

Qui-Gon, Siri, Satine, Padmé…Anakin.

Even Luke and Leia.

The sands of Tatooine roared over him, hungry and unrelenting, and Obi-Wan let them. Maybe at the other end there would be peace.

But then, from far away, Obi-Wan felt something…tugging at him?

Frowning, the Jedi Master couldn't help but reach out, reach back.

A tiny memory. A well-beloved voice murmuring over the wind.

"Obi-Wan, get up."

"No," he whispered back.

"Get up, old man. This is not how you die."

Obi-Wan blinked and saw nothing but sand.

"Anakin?" His voice was scratchy from disuse and all the pain he had been suppressing for months was in it.

The voice, cold and uncaring though it was, was Anakin's. Some gift from the Force perhaps. "How?" he gasped. 'Where are you?' his heart cried.

"This is not how you die," Anakin's voice repeated, louder, more certain. And now it was filled with something else as well. Something that sounded almost like a promise. Almost like hope.

Obi-Wan pushed himself up onto his knees, reaching out to the Force, slamming his shields back in place while at the same time reaching out for Anakin, for their frayed and almost-destroyed bond.

Indeed, before today, Obi-Wan had thought the bond between them was gone.

Just like Anakin.

But even as he reached for him, Anakin's cold presence began to fade. "Don't go," he pleaded, sending warmth and gratitude along their bond. Yet it was like a black hole in space had opened up between them, sucking up all of Obi-Wan's love long before it could reach his former padawan.

Wherever Anakin was in death, Obi-Wan could not reach him.

Yet still Obi-Wan pushed himself back to his feet, pulled his hood low, held onto that tiny spark of their bond in the Force, and slowly made his way home.

Far, far away, aboard a pristine, coldly-efficient Star Destroyer, Darth Vader woke in his bacta tank after a strange dream.

More machine now than man, the Dark Lord of the Sith sometimes still dreamed like a man. Like Anakin Skywalker.

Despite his best efforts to eradicate such weakness.

Tonight, there had been a sandstorm on a desolate, desert planet which had reminded him strangely of Tatooine.

His old master had been there.

Obi-Wan looked older, more exhausted and more beaten than Vader had ever seen him. He looked like he given up, as though everything had been taken away from him and he could no longer bring himself to go on.

Vader should have rejoiced. Obi-Wan was going to die, alone and defeated and far from…Vader.

Something in the Sith Lord, some fundamental law of the universe, rebelled at such a notion. Kenobi was…was indestructible.

If he was ever to die, it would be with Vader, at the end of the Sith Lord's blade. Not from some pathetic storm.

Vader had called out to him, felt his presence, heard his voice. And for a moment he had been sure…

But it was just a dream. Here in the waking world, Vader could feel no hint of his old Master's presence, no matter how furiously he pushed for the Force to show him.

As always, the Force took and gave nothing.

As always, he was alone.

Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith, donned his armor and went to serve his Empire.

End Notes: I'm constantly drawn to Obi-Wan's time on Tatooine. I also have a head canon that he – and all the other Jedi – were vegetarians, so that's why he's looking for mushrooms. I remember reading somewhere that they grew on the side of vaporators in the morning, so I figured in the shadow of a dune might work too.


End file.
